“Journalism still f***ing matters!” That is the catchcry of the newshound Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) and the unofficial mantra of this belated sequel to the hit 2006 dramedyThe Devil Wears Prada. Back then, Andy was an undercover everywoman in a cerulean blue sweater who encountered high fashion and workplace tyranny in an adaptation of the bestselling roman à clef by the former Vogue employee Lauren Weisberger.
Andy’s fish-out-of-water high jinks included pillorying fashionistas while humanising the world of, ahem, Runway magazine, including Runway’s fearsome editor-in-chief, the Anna Wintour stand-in Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). By the film’s feelgood finale Andy had nonetheless recognised that fashion, well, flipping matters.
Twenty years later things are less good. Andy’s sweary rant occurs early, after she discovers that her respected Manhattan broadsheet, The Vanguard, has folded. She’s an award-winning reporter and, like Peter Finch in Network, is mad as hell and not going to take it any more. And as for the commercial status of everyone’s favourite swag mag? “Runway stopped being a magazine years ago!” sighs the fashion director Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) before bemoaning the bottom-line realities of fading sales and digital publishing.
Let’s respect the film’s creative team, notably the director, David Frankel, and the screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, then, for attempting a gloomy thematic makeunder even as each frame is crammed with designer gloss, branded fashion parties and jaunty celebrity cameos (hello Lady Gaga and Rory McIlroy). The collapsing value of Runway in a film about the glamour of Runway, however, is a conundrum McKenna’s script never fully resolves, preferring, perhaps wisely, to swerve into a warm and affectionate revamp of the original.
Streep with Stanley Tucci as NigelPA
The jobless Andy is thus rehired by Runway and re-encounters the alpha boss, and franchise secret weapon, Miranda. It is difficult to overstate Streep’s importance, and how deeply she inhabits a role that, for any other actress, would certainly be cartoonish — the outfits, the glasses and the whispered catchphrase “that’s all”.
Instead, while Miranda patiently awaits promotion and coolly observes the corporate horse trading behind a possible Runway takeover, Streep guides the character to sublime places. She does physical comedy with a Jacques Tati-esque routine involving hanging up her own coat. She does mildly sozzled at a party in the Hamptons (cameos here including Jenna Bush and Tina Brown). And if Miranda’s default setting remains soigné swagger, she also reveals subterranean torrents through silent half-snarls and tiny broken grimaces.
In one moving set piece in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a melancholic Miranda stands alone at night, uncharacteristically rejected and almost teary, outside the Louis Vuitton and Prada stores. She’s like Cathy outside Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights, sadly separated from, yet tantalisingly close to, her heart’s desire. It helps too, of course, that Streep has a handy foil in Hathaway, who once again injects Andy with just the right hint of perky naivety to maintain her status as the clueless straight woman to her co-star’s scheming diva.
The rest of the film sees the welcome return of Emily Blunt’s supercilious Emily Charlton, now a marketing maven who admits to foisting overpriced Dior handbags on Middle American women who cannot afford them (another brave feelbad jibe from McKenna). There are plenty of shenanigans about saving Runway from extinction, plus an indecent deluge of after-show montages — how many more Donatella Versace reaction shots do we need? And there’s also a tentative romance for Andy with a charisma-free Aussie plank called Peter (Patrick Brammall), which adds nothing but a jolt of the ick.
Still, all flaws are forgiven by the self-referential subplot that has Andy secretly planning, and pitching to publishers, a coal-face exposé about her time at Runway. It’s a savvy circular touch that brings Weisberger’s book back into play and provides the drama with that most elusive of modern film accessories: satisfying closure.
★★★★☆
12A, 119min
In cinemas from May 1
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